Fangirls as teachers: examining pedagogic discourse in an online fan site

Videogames, such as The Sims, are a digital media passion drawing adolescents to online spaces where they create and share content. This article explores how discourses and expectations are taught in one online, videogame-related fan site of adolescents who read and write Sims fan fiction. Using Bernstein's pedagogic discourse theory, data from a 2-year virtual ethnography are analyzed to study pedagogic interactions between moderators and members within The Sims Writers' Hangout, an online discussion forum. Findings point to the dominance of regulative discourse and how discourses relocated from other media sites serve as pedagogic discourse in this informal digital literacy learning space. This article contributes to our understanding of digital literacy and learning in online environments by focusing on the pedagogy used to teach expectations. The analysis also points to the utility of Bernstein's theory for studying informal online learning.

[1]  Rhiannon Bury.  Cyberspaces of Their Own: Female Fandoms Online , 2005 .

[2]  Kevin Jiang.  Introduction , 2013, Nature Medicine.

[3]  Jackie Marsh.  New literacies and old pedagogies: recontextualizing rules and practices , 2007 .

[4]  Henry Jenkins.  Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century , 2006 .

[5]  James Paul Gee,et al.  Women and Gaming: The Sims and 21st Century Learning , 2010 .

[6]  Tom Boellstorff.  Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human , 2008 .

[7]  Bernt Schnettler,et al.  Virtual Ethnography , 2007 .

[8]  B. Bernstein.  The structuring of pedagogic discourse , 1990 .

[9]  Alexandra Rankin Macgill,et al.  Teens and social media , 2008 .

[10]  C. Beavis,et al.  Challenging Notions of Gendered Game Play: Teenagers playing The Sims , 2005 .

[11]  Jayne C. Lammers,et al.  The Sims2 and Women’s IT Learning , 2008 .

[12]  Alecia Marie Magnifico,et al.  Toward an Affinity Space Methodology: Considerations for Literacy Research , 2012 .

[13]  S. Michaels,et al.  A pedagogy of Multiliteracies Designing Social Futures , 1996 .

[14]  Jayne C. Lammers,et al.  "The Hangout was Serious Business:" Exploring Literacies and Learning in an Online Sims Fan Fiction Community , 2011 .

[15]  Sean C. Duncan,et al.  Scientific Habits of Mind in Virtual Worlds , 2008 .

[16]  William Tyler.  Crosswired: Hypertext, critical theory, and pedagogic discourse , 2001 .

[17]  Graeme Kirkpatrick.  Players Unleashed!: Modding The Sims and the Culture of Gaming , 2012 .

[18]  J. van Leeuwen,et al.  Virtual Worlds , 2020, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[19]  Howard Rheingold,et al.  The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier , 2000 .

[20]  Basil Bernstein,et al.  Pedagogy, symbolic control, and identity : theory, research, critique , 1997 .

[21]  C. Hine,et al.  How can qualitative internet researchers define the boundaries of their projects , 2008 .

[22]  A. Lu.  Video Games and Learning: Teaching and Participatory Culture in the Digital Age , 2013 .

[23]  James Paul Gee,et al.  How to do Discourse Analysis: A Toolkit , 2014 .

[24]  Donna E. Alvermann,et al.  Why Bother Theorizing Adolescents' Online Literacies for Classroom Practice and Research? , 2008 .

[25]  Kevin Leander,et al.  Tracing the Everyday 'Sitings' of Adolescents on the Internet: a strategic adaptation of ethnography across online and offline spaces , 2003 .

[26]  Elizabeth King,et al.  Not just a dollhouse: what The Sims2 can teach us about women's IT learning , 2009 .

[27]  Mizuko Ito,et al.  Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media , 2009 .

[28]  James Paul Gee,et al.  What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy , 2007, CIE.

[29]  H. Daniels,et al.  Towards a sociology of pedagogy: The contribution of Basil Bernstein to research , 2001 .

[30]  Elizabeth Birr Moje,et al.  Standpoints: A Call for New Research on New and Multi-Literacies. , 2009 .

[31]  I. Robertson.  E-Learning Practices: Exploring the Potential of Pedagogic Space, Activity Theory and the Pedagogic Device , 2007 .

[32]  Jim Everett,et al.  Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human , 2010 .

[33]  G. Moss.  Informal Literacies and Pedagogic Discourse , 2000 .

[34]  N. Baym.  Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community , 1999 .

[35]  Mirjam Vosmeer,et al.  Playing The Sims2: an exploration of gender differences in players’ motivations and patterns of play , 2010, New Media Soc..

[36]  Jackie Marsh,et al.  Literacy and Popular Culture: Using Children's Culture in the Classroom , 2000 .

[37]  D. Leu,et al.  Comments on Greenhow, Robelia, and Hughes: Expanding the New Literacies Conversation , 2009 .

[38]  Constance Steinkuehler,et al.  Computational Literacy in Online Games: The Social Life of Mods , 2009, Int. J. Gaming Comput. Mediat. Simulations.

[39]  Gunther Kress,et al.  Literacy in the New Media Age , 2003 .

[40]  Jennifer Stromer-Galley,et al.  The Digital Dollhouse , 2007, Games Cult..

[41]  Deborah A. Fields,et al.  A connective ethnography of peer knowledge sharing and diffusion in a tween virtual world , 2009, Int. J. Comput. Support. Collab. Learn..

[42]  Jennifer Preece,et al.  The top five reasons for lurking: improving community experiences for everyone , 2004, Comput. Hum. Behav..